Bosnian Serb leaders' objections threaten prosperous EU future

Your article (Threat by Bosnia Serbs alarms Europe and US, 15 October) has resulted in a reaction (Letters, 21 October) by the adviser to the prime minister of one of two entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, claiming that EU accession for Bosnia-Herzegovina would not require constitutional changes. This contradicts all EU principles and recommendations, while at the same it insidiously threatens that the division of the country is a possible scenario. In doing so, it distracts from key actions required now, when a long-term, prosperous future for the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina is overshadowed by similar disaster scenarios.

These key actions would require this country to undergo vital constitutional changes negotiated through an open democratic process by all legitimate state institutions, such as the presidency, the governments and the parliaments, as well as prominent civil society groups at all levels, supported by international institutions. Bosnia-Herzegovina has a long tradition of proper civic and democratic alternatives to nationalist division and racism, as in the case of Tuzla. Such promising alternatives are excluded and the majority of citizens gagged from what should be a democratic process of deliberating constitutional changes.

The international instigators of the Butmir talks have attempted to blackmail the already ghettoised citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina with visa-free travel in exchange for concessions that would be detrimental to a long-term peace and stability in the region. These concessions would cement corruption, disguised as the ethnic division, and would hand the public good and the property belonging to all citizens of this country to nationalist elites. This would legitimise genocide and its postwar legacy of everyday violence committed by its perpetrators, who are still at large.

Most importantly, this would set a dangerous precedent in international politics that the capital stolen in the blood of war and genocide and its Dayton aftermath is a lucrative asset nationally and internationally. The cynical international instigators of the Butmir talks and the subsequent failure, driven by their myopic motivations, should know better than to damage so seriously the political credibility of the European commission and of all European Union member states.